Capitalism or Socialism?

In presenting our case to the working class of Great Britain, which we have been doing for over forty years, we do not waste our time and space on issues such as humanizing the workhouses, that is to say, whether such workhouses shall be bigger or better. Neither do we bother as to whether there shall be central heating in the waiting rooms in the Labour Exchanges or not. Neither do we waste our time as to whether there shall be a return to the Gold Standard, or whether the Pound Sterling shall be devalued, or whether Military Conscription shall endure for 18 months or 12 months.

We are hearing a great deal about the promise of the future just now, and also a good deal about the murky past. We had a similar experience in the last war, and the brave new world of the future we were promised dissolved, like the mirage it was, into a new world with the evils of the old, like unemployment, pressing upon us with greater weight than ever before.

At present we who are workers are employed by Trusts, like the Soap, Oil or Electric Trusts; by companies not yet combined into Trusts; by Governmental and Municipal bodies; and by private individuals. In each of these cases people who have more money than they require to meet their needs use what is over either to buy shares or to buy what may be called "means of production," that is, machinery and whatever else is necessary to produce something that can be sold for a profit. This way of spending the surplus money is called investing capital, that is, spending money with the object of getting back more money that is paid out.

A lot of make-believe capitalist sympathy has been slobbered over the working class recently as the result of the revelations of some of the horrors of working-class existence in the mining districts and in the East End of London; That the capitalists may make a genuine effort to improve these conditions is quite possible. The war has shown them that they have a C3 nation of workers, and the latest births and deaths returns have revealed to them the unpleasant prospect that unless they bestir themselves they will soon have no nation of workers at all on which to found the military and commercial supremacy of their Empire. But even if they do improve the workers conditions; if they stable them in palaces and harness them in “Workmen’s Charters"; if Lord Leverem finds that he can exhaust his men in six hours and does it, and Mr.